


Fratello Roto: Henrietta

by Abyssal_Agito



Category: Gunslinger Girl
Genre: Drowning, Gen, Gun Violence, Snuff, Underwater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 19:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16373954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abyssal_Agito/pseuds/Abyssal_Agito
Summary: Drawn to Venice on a counter insurgency operation against the Padania Republic Faction, the fratello unit Jose and Henrietta follows a suspected PRF terrorist in hopes to end a potential PRF threat...





	Fratello Roto: Henrietta

The PRF was getting much bolder in their actions as of late, which meant the Agency was stretched a little thinner than usual countering their activities the Agency deemed dangerous. The fratellos, the Agency’s forefront combat units in their fight against the PRF, were more or less ready to take on any assignment given to them.  
  
Jose Croce’s assignment was no different, finding himself in the quieter side of the usually busy and tourist filled city of Venice. Reports of known PRF presence in the area had given the Agency reasons to deploy one of their top fratello teams to investigate, and if possible, neutralize any PRF activity in the area that could jeopardize the peace of the country. What worries him however was that any attempt to discern or recon the area came up empty, and he never believed in going in blind if possible but orders are orders.  
  
He never had any reason to disbelieve that he couldn’t handle what the PRF was plotting though. Especially when he has Henrietta at his side with her ever present violin case. The little girl was ever quiet as always following him by his side, speaking only when necessary or prompted to.   
  
After a few hours after arriving at the suspected area, they were soon tailing discreetly one known PRF fugitive: Enrico Madara, a former naval officer in the Marina Militaire with known records of high profile terrorist attacks to his name, and managing to evade capture from the Agency. Perhaps his luck was running out now that the Jose and Henrietta fratello were on his tail.  
  
They followed him up and down quiet paths and unknown alleys, still without him noticing them. It felt as if they travelled almost the entire length of Venice before Enrico finally stopped in front of a decrepit looking two storey house built out on the water. Before he entered, he took a cursory look of his surroundings slowly, seemingly eyeing everything. Once he looks as if he was satisfied that not a soul was around anywhere, he finally turned and opened the door and let himself in.  
  
Jose reached into his coat pocket and draw out his FN Five-seveN pistol from its covert holster before signalling Henrietta to arm herself as well. Following suit with a curt nod, she unlatches her violin case and takes out her FN P90 submachine gun which she promptly flicked the safety off after giving the ammo counter a quick check: her spare magazine she kept on her person. Sharing the same ammunition, their weapon of choice exemplifies their fratello unit more than anything.  
  
After waiting for a few minutes, Jose gave the signal to Henrietta to follow before breaking cover of the shadow they were hiding in, and makes a dash for the house with Henrietta close behind. Once they neared the door, Jose breaks right to hide behind the cover of the door frame while Henrietta took the left, crouching.  
  
From inside, they could hear hushed voices and soft moving machineries emanating from somewhere in the house. With the count of three fingers gestured to Henrietta, Jose counted down from three to one, and on cue, Henrietta pulls open the door and dashes in.  
  
Three men were in the lobby adjoining the living room with their guns lowered and looking perplexed at the sight of a small brown haired girl lugging a firearm twice the size of her arms. They never managed to raise their weapon at Henrietta when she summarily opened fire at them in quick short bursts aimed straight in the center of their body, and they fell where they stood bodily while their weapons clattered on the floor uselessly.  
  
The combination of the sound of gunfire and falling body was enough to alert the rest of the occupants of the house to the presence of their enemy, and two men burst out of a corridor with their weapons raised searching for targets. They too were slightly perplexed at first at the sight of Henrietta but was quick to take aim at here regardless: they know the Agency makes use of child cyborgs as combat units.  
  
They were not quick however to notice Jose coming in through the door as well who opened fire with his pistol at them, hitting the first man in the finger that elicited a pained yelp and another two round into his neck and head silencing him to a gurgle as blood erupted from his mouth as he fell down. His comrade who was taken by surprise of the presence of another enemy, dies in a hail of gunfire from Henrietta’s P90.  
  
More cries and shouts came from above, sounding even more harried and angrier than the last, followed by numerous different footsteps.  
  
“Henrietta, upstairs, clear it.” Jose ordered as he looks around their immediate vicinity to make sure it’s clear. Switching her almost empty magazine for a fresh one which she promptly slams and taps into the magazine feed, she rushes into the adjoining corridor the others came out of from earlier and up the staircase with fast flurried steps without barely looking out of breath thanks to technology and science that was developed and built into her. Four more people, three men and a woman were coming down the stairs, when they saw Henrietta came up and turn to stop at the halfway landing. They turned their guns on her like the others but Henrietta was quicker to fire hers first and a steady stream of lead erupted from her P90 that burned the air between her and her assailants who fell and died.  
  
The woman however was hit by a grazing shot and thought better than to continue engaging the monstrous little girl with a submachine gun. In hurried bated breaths intersected with quiet prayers to God, she turned to flee back into the room they came from in earlier. She barely managed to reach the door when bullets ricochets off the heavy wooden frame and sending splinters up in to the air that surprises her.  
  
It was the last thing she did before a well place bullet entered the back of her head, followed by four more shots that hit her squarely in the back that shook her body violently, and she finally fell forward onto the floor with a thud, with blood and worse spilling out of the gaping hole in her temple. Henrietta was careful to have climbed up the rest of the stairs and jumped over the dead bodies of the men she shot earlier to land deftly at the top before shooting the retreating woman.  
  
No other sound came after that as silence descends on the house, but Henrietta was still careful and alert for anything. She searched the rooms ahead of her on the floor she was on for any other PRF members but there were none. Most of the rooms were empty save for one with a table littered with unused weapons and ammunition the four dead PRFs members seems to have came from.   
  
Confirming that the upper floor was clear, Henrietta gingerly makes her way around the dead bodies on the stairs and heads back down to the lower floor to rejoin Jose. Only, he was nowhere to be seen or heard. The room she last saw him in was empty save for the dead. Reloading her P90 at the ready, she turns towards deeper into the house through another corridor that she has yet to enter but assumes Jose did. She did not call out to him despite needing to look for him as doing so would alert any surviving PRF members to her location.  
  
Tactfully, she searched every room she came across but only to find them as empty as the rest of the house. She was starting to get worried about her handler who was missing without a trace since he last gave his orders to clear the upper levels. Where had he gone to after that was beyond her guess, but she hopes she can find him soon before something happens or worse.  
  
Eventually, Henrietta reaches the last room on the lower floor of the house, a large one at that with slightly higher reaching walls than the rest. From the adjoining kitchen space next to it, she surmised this was the dining room. While it was just as empty as all the other rooms she cleared on her way here, the one thing that was out of place was the suspicious hatchway with an open steel watertight door with a valve one can find on ships seemingly built into the floor leading to a possibly secret compartment. Slowly, she steps around it to be sure that no one was hiding behind it. Finding there was none, she then slowly approaches it, step by step in case somebody would climb out of it, and for the first time, she notices the calm surface of water inside the compartment under the door. There was no way anyone could climb out of that.  
  
Upon closer inspection, she notices now too a bit of red splashed on the side of the door. For reasons even she could not comprehend when she locked eyes with it, she lowered her weapon and tries to reach out to it with her now free left hand slowly. Having seen blood for most of her service life, she was very sure that it was blood that had not yet dried out. But without Jose in sight, her cognitive processing was starting to think the unthinkable. That maybe perhaps the worse had happened. Or maybe it didn’t, hence why she wanted to check it herself.  
  
“End of the line, little lady.” Came a cruel voice suddenly from out of nowhere, interrupting Henrietta’s thought processes. She turns towards the source of the voice in a flash which was somewhere behind her from behind the kitchen counter. She was already training her gun up towards the mustachioed grinning face of the elusive Enrico, but for once, Henrietta was slower than her assailant in firing her weapon. Enrico let rip a hail of lead from the M249 machinegun he had managed to prop up on the kitchen counter, the bullets tracing across the floor towards Henrietta. Recognizing she was at a disadvantage without any nearby cover whatsoever, she does the next best thing, and that was to step back and jump down into the relative safety of the flooded compartment behind her. Her head vanished beneath the surface of the water just as bullets began ricocheting off the spot where she was standing moments ago.  
  
The sudden submersion into the cold water did little to surprise her right away, and as such, once the frothing bubbles from her sudden dive dissolved, she was quick to back off away from the open hatchway lest the still roaring storm of flying lead somehow find its way in and hit her. Her P90 still gripped tightly in her hands, she was also all to aware that she didn’t manage to catch a full breath before her sudden retreat into the water. Even with her cyber enhancements and organs, she was still very much human on a certain level and she certainly has a limit to holding her breath underwater. But as long as she could still hear the muffled sound of the rapid firing shots above her, then she has no choice but to remain underwater for as long as she can.  
  
Still, even with her enhanced senses, it took a while for her to notice that the gunfire had subsided above due to the natural sound dampening nature of water, and she peered up to the surface, slowly rising up to the air her now straining lungs found wanting above. So conflicted was she in wanting to breathe soon and being careful of her still active assailant that she didn’t think too much nor cared of the approaching footsteps above.  
  
Just as she was just inches from breaking the surface, the hatch closes down on her with a slam followed by the sound of a lock, surprising her with a start that she opened her mouth and grunted in shock. She looks up incredulously at the now closed hatch, and reaching up to the valve trying to turn it open. Her need to breathe growing stronger by the second, as evident by her convulsing chest, Henrietta grunted in panic trying to push open the hatch to no avail; even her enhanced strength was not enough to turn the locked valve. Without Jose to direct her actions or for her to focus on her surroundings, Henrietta was fighting a losing battle. Her grunts, each sending strands of bubbles escaping past her lips, were almost like cries for help. Each tug on the valve becoming for insistent as Henrietta begs to someone, anyone to get her out.  
  
Pursing her lips tightly, Henrietta pushed herself off the hatch while letting go of the valve, allowing herself to fall back downwards as she raises her P90 up towards the hatch in a desperate bid to escape. But nothing came from her once trusted weapon when she pulled the trigger. She thought she was imagining things in her air deprived state and tried to pull the trigger again. Aside from the vibration of the trigger pulling something inside the gun’s mechanism, the P90 remains silent.  
  
Henrietta glances at her weapon with aghast, feeling betrayed by her weapon in her last desperate seconds. Still she incessantly pulled the trigger over and over, begging her weapon to fire but only yielding the same result. She grunted and whined in a desperate pleading for a miracle.  
  
 _No,_ she thought to herself. _This can’t be happening. Mister Jose-_  
  
Weakened mentally and physically, a sudden spasm hit her that wracked her petite frame, and she coughs and exhales her breath into a flurry of bubbles from her parted lips, before her body’s natural instinct to inhale inadvertently pulls water into her heaving, insisting lungs. Her eyes opened wide with shock, her mouth open and closing as she coughed, gurgled, inhaled, and coughed again as her body tries to pull air from somewhere into her tortured lungs. Her convulsions causes her to bend her body back in an arch as her last silent scream and cry only came out as pained gurgling as water flooded her lungs.  
  
With a final shudder and gurgle, Henrietta became still as her mind and body shuts down. Trickles of air continued to escape her open mouth as her unseeing eyes glazes over. Her P90 still gripped tightly in her hands weighs her down, and her lifeless body slowly sinks down to the bottom of the flooded compartment that was her watery tomb.


End file.
